Active uncoiling and feeding of a continuum arm robot

Continuum arms are becoming more popular for use in inspection and repair of hard to reach environments, typically in-situ. These applications characteristically have less space outside the scenario as well as internally. Previous approaches require a significant footprint in this area, potentially limiting the possible exploitations. The algorithm reported within this paper demonstrates a method to actively coil / uncoil a continuum arm on a helical drum, which can be applied to multiple trajectories within a practical computation time. Deviations from desired trajectory are below 3 mm or 1°, individual steps calculated on average in 0.031 s, or complete computation for new trajectory within 170 s.